Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Cashew Nut Senior Purchasing Officer Job Vacancy in Kilifi Kenya

Background:Equatorial Nut Processors is one of the leading edible nut concerns in East Africa. The company’s range of products, for both local and export markets, focuses on three principal nuts – Macadamia, Cashew and Peanuts.

ENP was founded in 1994, and it has grown over the years to occupy a prominent position in the region’s nut sector.

Cashew Nuts are grown in Coastal region of Kenya, specifically Kilifi, Kwale and Lamu counties. Kenya has a potential to produce more than 63,000 metric tonnes valued at Sh2 billion.

However, farmers at the Kenyan coast have neglected tending their cashew trees due to what they consider “exploitation” by middlemen and low productivity of the old orchards due to lack of linkage to markets, input suppliers and financial services to pre-finance production. Farmers therefore are shifting focus to other crops yellow passion fruit, cassava and chillies.

Production of cashew dropped from 8,000MT in 2009/2010 to 5,300MT in 2011/2012 and to 3,800MT as the lowest production in 2013.

The Cashew Nut sector in Kenya faces the key challenge of low producer (farm gate) prices which has seen farmers cut down some of their trees.

There have been attempts to return the sector to productivity with the government introducing a policy that banned export of in-shell nuts to promote value addition through processing in the year 2009.

The few nuts available are shared between Equatorial Nut Processors Ltd, Wonder Nut, Kenya Nut, Jungle Nut and Millenium.

On average each processor would currently get 760MT but ENP got only 600MT in 2013/2014 season. This is despite the fact that the factory has a capacity of 3000MT. Job Context